With major updates coming our way, our focus has temporarily been prioritized on the update content.

Additionally, we’re working on making some internal changes in how feedback is collected and how responses are handled.

Without further ado, let’s get on discussing a few topics!

Retrieving Items from the Item Mall

Player Clovechan has suggested that Elsword allow players to retrieve items from the Item Mall even if they aren’t for their class.
This is a great point, and based on that, we completely understand why he’d want a feature like this.

However, more than just a technical policy used when purchasing items from the Item Mall, there are restrictions that are applied on an item-by-item basis which doesn’t allow some characters/classes to retrieve said items from the Item Mall inventory unless it is for that specific character/class. The reason for this policy is to prevent players from accidentally transferring items to wrong characters, and/or creating a potentially game-breaking code clash to occur. Understandably, labeling each and every item in the shop (individually) would just be an absolute mess.

The issue brought up by Clovechan is specifically for players who can’t gift and want to be able to give certain Item Mall items to their friends who play different characters. A solution to the issue that some players have been using is by creating the specific character/class in question and waiting for the trade restrictions to expire in order to gift that item to their friends. Understandably, this is frustrating for that group of players who cannot gift and want to be able to give Item Mall presents to their friends.

That being said, we’ve thought long and hard on how to best resolve this gifting concern internally, and unfortunately, there’s no way to provide a gifting option and circumvent the aforementioned technical issues without breaking the game. Granted, this is based on the current backend structure, and something we can revisit at a later time, but for the time being, our policy on these restrictions is still going to stay as is. In addition, we firmly believe that this restriction also removes the potential of mistaken item transfers, an issue we want to prevent before it even happens.

We have read other player solutions to this, such as making a warning message before you transfer. Definitely a good idea. On another note (hehe), it seems the majority of the inquiries seem to revolve around the potential to gift Skill Notes. Perhaps we can start off with making only skill notes unrestricted.

We will continue to brainstorm ideas on possible solutions to this issue, and will try to come to a conclusion on the matter.
As well, please help us by submitting more ideas on how we can keep the restriction policy but at the same time alleviate the issue.

Ice Burner Previews

Trying on Ice Burner sets as a preview through the Item Mall is a suggestion recently submitted this month by player Ignia (as well as being suggested by other players in the past).

This suggestion calls for a feature that enables players to click on an Ice Burner item in the Item Mall, and allows those players to preview what the set would look like on their characters.

Though this feature is currently available in Korea; this option is not available on our Elsword version. Elsword Korea currently releases their Ice Burner sets all at once, whereas our version releases 4 set pieces, 6 set pieces and 8 set pieces in intervals. Due to how these Ice Burner sets are released in Korea, a full preview feature can be utilized as the full sets are released at once.

The Ice Burner preview feature can only preview full sets at any given time for each character. Because we offer a staggered Ice Burner item release program in the North American version, we do not want players to mistakenly think that the whole set is available for purchase if the preview existed in the Item Mall. In addition, we would not want to preview or display only 4 pieces of what would later be a full set because it would ruin the awesome look of the whole set.

Now you may argue that while we do display the full set on our North American website and advertisements, and we have print which states which pieces are available. Unfortunately, we don’t have any functional methods to customize the item text for each Ice Burner item with each corresponding update. Basically, in order to use the preview feature with a staggered item release, each item would have to be customized with each update. As a game developer, it is in our best interest to cater to all types of players and all levels of player experience. Because we have a situation where if a full-featured Ice Burner preview may mislead a player by displaying a full set where all pieces of said set might not be in game yet, we cannot afford to have that specific cause any grief for those players that are unaware.

We still have a lot of room to discuss this issue amongst our teams. Potentially, only allowing a preview option for the sets that have been fully integrated.

However, we won’t be able to add this feature to the NA version just yet.